The Deal
Saturday, July 4, 
6:45 am

Mascoma scores $61M round to advance biofuel tech

  Share     E-Mail    Discussion    Print Story

As enthusiasm for corn ethanol wanes and demand for biofuel rises, cellulosic ethanol developer Mascoma Corp. said Tuesday it has raised $61 million from key strategic partners and previous investors. The company will use the funding to finish testing its technology before seeking alternative funding strategies to develop commercial production facilities.

Marathon Oil Corp. [MRO} led the round with a $10 million investment, joined by General Motors Corp. [GM] and previous investors General Catalyst Partners, Flagship Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures. VantagePoint Venture Partners and Atlas Venture.
 
The round brings total equity investment in the three-year-old company to more than $100 million, matching the amount Mascoma has landed in federal and state grants supporting its proprietary biotechnology processes for breaking down a variety of energy-intensive woody biomass and waste materials into low-cost ethanol.

Mascoma president Colin South said the new funding comes as the company prepares to launch its first demonstration facility in the next few months in Rome, N.Y. The company is also preparing to build larger scale research and production facilities in Michigan and Tennessee, supported largely by research partnerships with the U.S. Department of Energy and state agencies.

The company expects these facilities to prove that its technology is capable of scaling up to industrial capacities and increasing the amount of self-generated enzymes in the production process to reduce costs.

"The challenge in the industry has been the cost of processing, and the long-term effort and outcome of research would be to produce enzymes as the feedstock ferments," South said. "Initially, we won't be at that goal and will have to purchase enzymes, and that is not cost-effective." -- Clifford Carlsen

See May 6 press release from Mascoma
For more see Xconomy and Automotive Blogs

Continue reading below

Also on Dealscape





Post a comment




The Deal Pipeline

Deal Video


Inside The Deal: SecondMarket's Silbert on helping VCs achieve pre-IPO liquidity for their investments.


More video...

Crisis On Wall Street
Technology
Deals of The Decade

Community

Industry Insight

Potential FBAR filing changes

Offshore hedge funds and private equity funds may be 'financial accounts' for which investors must file FBAR.


Industry Insight

Finger on the pulse

Things PE investors should keep in mind to maintain the support and commitment from their lenders and limited partners.


Industry Insight

Closing the tough deal

Terms and structures now used to get deals done are post-closing purchase price payments, earnouts, simultaneous acquisitions, rollups, payments in kind and joint ventures.



©Copyright 2008, The Deal, LLC. All rights reserved. Please send all technical questions, comments or concerns to the Webmaster.